CNN anchor Jake Tapper was asked Friday about reports then-CNN contributor Donna Brazile obtained questions ahead of a town hall forum and shared the questions with Hillary Clinton campaign staffers.
“It’s…very, very troubling,” Tapper said in the interview on Washington, D.C. radio station WMAL. “Look, I have tremendous regard for Donna Brazile. She’s a good person and a nice person and I like her a lot but whatever took place here … and I know I had nothing to do with it … and I know CNN, we were so closely guarding our documents … they weren’t emailed around.”
CNN has said it did not share questions ahead of time with Brazile, and she insists she did not forward questions to the Clinton campaign. CNN has previously suggested media partner TV One may have provided the question to Brazile. This all came to light in a WikiLeaks email dump earlier this week. Brazile sent an email to Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri on March 12. The email contained a question about the death penalty, which TVOne host and town hall co-moderator Roland Martin asked, nearly word for word, at the forum the next day.
“Journalistically it’s horrifying and I’m sure it will have an impact on partnering with this organization in the future,” Tapper said Friday. Brazile was named interim chair of the DNC when another WikiLeaks dump caused the resignation of then-chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz just before the party’s nominating convention in July. Brazile contributor contracts with CNN and ABC were put on hold.